His eyes crinkled around the damp cutouts. “That’s better.”
I traced the outline of the mask, fussing it into place around his eyebrows. “Thanks for letting me pamper you. I know you hate this.”
“Idohate how this gross, slimy thing feels on my face...but I loveyou.”
I blushed, reaching for my phone and setting a twenty-minute timer. As soon as I put it down, he shifted, hands sliding up my waist, maneuvering us until we were stretched out along the couch. Eventually, curiosity got the best of me.
“What kind of doctor did you want to be before you dropped out?”
His thumb paused mid-circle on my shoulder. When he finally spoke, his voice was quieter. “Cardiovascular surgeon.”
I tilted my head up to look at him, surprised.
He gave a small, sombre smile. “Ironic, right? I wanted to fix hearts for a living, but I couldn’t keep my brother’s from stopping.”
My chest tightened. “How did you guys get into a car accident?”
He exhaled, long and steady, like he’d been holding that breath for years. “It was raining,” he said. “One of those nights when the road looked more like a mirror than asphalt. We were driving back from our cousin’s wedding—he was teasing me about my speech, I was teasing him about his dancing. Then the headlights came out of nowhere. A truck ran a red light.” He paused, his jaw clenching. “I remember the sound first—metal twisting, glass shattering, the world folding in on itself. When I came to, the car was upside down. He wasn’t moving.” His voice faltered. “I crawled out, dragged him onto the road. There was blood everywhere. I called for help, but no one came fast enough.” He stared past me, like he could still see it. “I tried to save him before the ambulance arrived. I shoved my handagainst his chest, counted the compressions out loud, over and over, but then...I felt his heartbeat just stop, right there, under my palm.”
The silence that followed felt like it belonged to both of them—him and the brother he couldn’t save.
“They told me later there wasn’t anything I could’ve done, but that doesn’t change the fact that my hands were the last to touch him alive.”
“I’m really sorry, Khalifa,” I whispered.
He nodded once, like he’d prepared himself for this part but still had to force it out. “I think...I think some part of my father wishes it were me who died instead. And I think he hates himself for feeling that way, and the only way he knows how to deal with it is to—” He swallowed. “To blame me.”
Something tore inside me, severe and sudden, like an organ being pulled loose. The idea of him not existing—of a world where I never met him, never sparred with him, never loved him in all the reckless ways without meaning to—hurt with no words to translate it.
And then another pain layered over it, deeper: that he’d had to grow up under the weight of that impossible grief, that impossible guilt, carrying a burden he never should’ve been handed.
“Your dad is the worst person ever,” I said, my voice shaking with an anger that didn’t have room for eloquence. “I should’ve thrown my fork at him.”
A surprised chuckle escaped him. “I have never seen someone stand up to my father the way you did.” He paused, eyes flicking to me, something tender and wrecked passing through them. “Keenan would’ve liked you.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not into the whole brother love triangle thing. I probably would’ve ended up choosing him.”
He dipped down, biting my collarbone lightly in retaliation. The sheet mask immediately slid lopsided across his face like it was trying to escape. I burst out laughing. He did too, while I tried to wrangle the mask into staying put with bossy fingers. The sound—his low, throaty laugh mingling with mine—cracked the heaviness.
I was beginning to realize that the closed-off, unnaturally calm Khalifa I first met was only his topmost layer. A decoy. That his practiced nonchalant way of moving through life was a product of sheer self-preservation, and beneath that surface, there was a man whocraved. He craved pancakes at midnight, the last bite of ice cream, a few too many chocolates after dinner. He craved to be asked, to be heard, to be understood, to be held, to be protected, to be kissed, to be loved, to be chosen. He craved it all, even the things he’d never allowed himself to imagine having, and somehow, I found myself wanting to give him all of it.
“Why weren’t you ever close with your brothers?” he asked, yanking me back from my musings.
I looked at the ceiling as though the answer might be written there. “I think because of the huge age gap,” I said after a moment. “It was hard to get close. Our ages never overlapped to a time when we could really understand each other. It was just the four of them for so long, and then when I was born, I was this strange pink bundle they couldn’t figure out what to do with.”
He smiled faintly. “A pink bundle.”
“Yeah,” I said. “It was civil, for a while. Just your typical sibling shenanigans—them telling me I could never beat them, and me nearly killing myself trying to prove them wrong. But as I got older, I started noticing the differences in the way our mother treated us. The warmth she withheld from me, but wrapped around them like a blanket.” I paused, feeling the words catch in my throat. “And it wasn’t their fault. I know thatnow. But when you’re a kid, logic doesn’t matter. All you see is that they get her smile, her affection, her pride—and you don’t. I started to resent them for it. A part of me still does.”
He watched me, eyes soft. I could tell he wanted to say something, but didn’t. Maybe he knew there wasn’t anything to fix. Maybe he just understood.
“Do you ever feel like your family wrote a story about you before you even had a chance to exist in it? And no matter what you do, you can’t rewrite it?”
His hand slid into mine, fingers lacing through. “Yeah. Every day.”
“I love that you and your sister are close. You’re a good brother, Khalifa.”
He let out a short, disbelieving laugh, his thumb brushing over my knuckles as though the compliment didn’t have a designated shelf in his brain yet. “You think so?”
